N.Y.’s Cuomo Appoints Former Judge to Oversee Probes (Update2)
March 11, 2010, 6:40 PM EST(Adds Cuomo’s political plans in 10th paragraph.)
By Henry Goldman
March 11 (Bloomberg) -- New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo removed himself and appointed Judith Kaye, the state’s former chief judge, as an independent counsel to oversee investigations related to the conduct of Governor David Paterson.
Cuomo, 52, was drawn into the investigation after Paterson asked him to probe a New York Times report that state police officers had contact with a woman who accused one of his aides of assault and had sought a court’s protective order against him. A judge dismissed the case a day after the governor himself had contact with the woman, the Times said.
On March 3, a state ethics panel asked Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares to determine whether Paterson committed a crime by soliciting five free World Series tickets and misleading investigators about whether he had intended to pay for them.
“She can do whatever she wants to do, it’s up to her,” Cuomo said of Kaye, 71, the former chief judge of New York’s Court of Appeals, its highest tribunal. She has agreed to work without compensation, he said.
“She is the best person in the state do this,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “No one has her record, no one has the integrity, no one has the experience.”
He and his staff reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, thousands of e-mails and interviewed dozens of witnesses, and concluded “there are credible issues that need to be resolved,” Cuomo said.
Halted Campaign
Paterson, 55, withdrew as a candidate for this year’s governor’s election Feb. 26, after the Times reported his involvement in the assault case. The governor suspended his aide, David Johnson, 37, without pay.
The U.S. Attorney’s office has opened a third investigation, Cuomo said, into the governor’s dealings with Aqueduct Entertainment Group, a consortium that had been chosen to operate video lottery terminals at Aqueduct racetrack. The governor announced today he removed the group because it can’t qualify for a gaming license.
Even before Paterson’s withdrawal, Cuomo told political supporters he intended to seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year. His campaign fund, Andrew Cuomo 2010, had amassed $16 million as of Jan. 15.
“I have several pressing cases that are important to conclude and at the appropriate time I will announce my political intentions,” Cuomo said today.
No ‘Technical Conflict’
Cuomo said he had no “technical conflict in this case” because Paterson removed himself as a candidate. Cuomo said he decided to appoint Kaye out of “an abundance of caution to have a process that’s beyond reproach.”
“An investigation of a sitting governor of the state of New York is a weighty matter indeed, further complicated by the political atmosphere that exists,” he said.
The attorney general’s decision to disqualify himself from the case followed a March 3 Quinnipiac University poll reporting that state voters favored appointment of a special prosecutor, 61 percent to 25 percent. The same survey, with an error margin of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, showed 70 percent of the state’s voters approved of Cuomo’s general job performance.
Kaye was appointed the state’s top judge by Cuomo’s father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, in 1993, after having served on the Court of Appeals since 1983. She swore in Paterson, the former lieutenant governor, March 17, 2008, when the previous chief executive, Eliot Spitzer, resigned in a prostitution scandal.
Kaye joined Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, a New York City law firm, in 2009, after retiring from the court the previous year.
--Editors: Pete Young, Walid el-Gabry
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
